Our View: State's rising graduation rates show local fixes net best result

Sometimes the smart central planners far removed from the problem do cobble together a successful one-size-fits-all solution, but more often than not it’s the folks closest to the crisis who are best suited to fashion the fix.

Such is the case, it appears, with efforts to reduce Texas’ high school dropout rate.

The Texas Tribune recently reported there’s reason for optimism concerning the state’s high school graduation rate.

“Many Texas school districts, including the state’s two largest, are reporting their third or fourth straight year of rising graduation rates — and the statewide average has climbed steadily since 2007, according to data kept by the Texas Education Agency,” a report by the online news service’s Morgan Smith noted.

Dallas Independent School District has increased its graduation rate by 14 percentage points over that time. Since Dallas ISD is the state’s largest school district, one might assume education experts are keen to mandate the remainder of the state’s more than 1,000 school districts adopt the programs enacted by the Metroplex system.

But one would be wrong.

“Dropout prevention studies are hard, expensive and rare,” the article quotes Lori Taylor, an education professor at Texas A&M University, as saying. “And just because there is no proof doesn’t mean school districts are wrong in believing their intervention is working. But it also doesn’t mean that we should instantly go out and advise everyone to do what they just did.”

The article notes, “Policymakers and school leaders attribute the increases to a variety of programs on the state and district level aimed at keeping students in the classroom. But, beyond the anecdotal, very little evidence exists as to why or if these programs are the reason for the state’s success.”

The dropout problem is complex, and so are the various competing data sets, assessment methods, reporting standards and tracking mechanisms created to define the problem and measure efforts to solve it.

But what is clear is there’s no one definitively superior approach to keeping high-risk students in school and successfully guiding them through until graduation.

Austin ISD Superintendent Meria Carstarphen told the Texas Tribune she could not name one program as the “silver bullet” for tackling the dropout problem. And Austin ISD’s graduation rates have risen 6 percentage points since 2008.

Closer to home, Lubbock ISD has seen its graduation rate rise 4 percentage points, thanks to a variety of programs targeting dropouts.

A 2009 Texas A&M study cited in the Texas Tribune article put the cost to the state of one year’s class of dropouts at $9.6 billion over their lifetimes in lost wages, reduced sales tax revenue and welfare taxes. That, coupled with the price dropouts pay in reduced opportunity and quality of life, makes addressing the problem equally important to the majority of Texans as it is for the individual students.

What keeps kids in school in Dallas or Austin or Houston may not work in convincing students in Lubbock or Amarillo or Brownfield to do the same — and vice versa. But it’s important each of those districts be given the latitude to find out what works for them and pursue it with vigor — we can’t afford not to.

At-a-glance

■ Our position: Texas’ graduation rates are improving, but no one program to reduce dropouts can be cited as the cause. It appears local districts are finding fixes that work for them and seeing success. It’s important the dropout rate be cut, and local decisions are a better way of doing so than one-size-fits-all mandates from central planners.

■ Why you should care: Dropouts not only hurt themselves financially, their reduced economic opportunity reduces the amount they can contribute to funding public services.

■ For more information: Log on to our website, www.lubbockonline.com, and enter the words “graduation rate” in the search box.